Webcomics

Once upon a time, I relied on the daily newspaper comic strips as my only source of daily animated entertainment.

To a certain extent, I still do. I borrow a newspaper from a co-worker, read Non-sequitur, and Dilbert. then I hand the paper back.

And then I go on-line, and first read the daily webcomic Least I Could Do. Then I go and see if Nuklear Power has a new comic up. Then I go to Order of the Stick.

These are just a few of the regular webcomics that have managed to make it as commercial successes. And they all did it with no support from any traditional media whatsoever.

None of these webcomics became well-known by advertising in traditional media either. All have popularity spread by word-of-web.

The same thing happened with comics since before the turn of the 19th century. All of them have spread because they were more popular than the medium that carried them. Editorial cartoons have and will long outlast the original medium that carried them.

If the traditional media wants to survive, they will realize and adapt to this fact.

Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski has been arrested. Apparently, all parents of 13 year old girls can sleep easy.

At least, that is what the L.A. District Attorney's office would apparently have us believe.

Polanski was arrested for drugging and raping a 13-year old girl. It was a crime. One to which he pleaded guilty. And spent time in jail undergoing psychiatric evaluation for.

He had been able to arrange a plea bargain with the state to avoid major jail time. I don't know the circumstances of this agreement, but apparently Polanski had found out that the judge in the case was planning to refuse it.

So Polanski did what anyone else with the means and the opportunity to do so would do: he fled.

He spent the better part of the next 40 years living abroad, never able to come home again. In the years since, Polanski has made dozens of films and won Oscars that he has not been able to accept. Meanwhile, his victim has gotten on with her life, is married and a mother, and had probably hoped that this particular part of her life would never be dredged up again.

But it has happened.

Some ambitious L.A. DA, hoping no doubt for bigger and better things in the future, arranged for Polanski to be arrested while in Switzerland. And the whole can of worms pops open again.

So, Roman Polanski will now spend months in jail fighting extradition. His victim, who thought this was behind her, is dragged into it again. And the news organizations of the world focus their attention on this story.

And they ignore the stories about other 13 year old girls being raped, or worse.

THAT, my friends, is the real tragedy of this story. Today, now, even as I write this, there are crimes being committed against young girls all over the world that are tens or hundred times worse than what happened to Polanski's victim. A good portion of those crimes are probably happening right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Nobody will care about these, of course, because the perpetrators and victims of these crimes are not famous. Not worth reporting about.

Not worth caring about.

What is the Alternative?

We are slaves to fossil fuels.

And why not? They are currently the most efficient producers of energy. Be they coal, oil, natural gas, or whatever, there is currently no viable alternative.

Doubt me? Consider.

Wind power: I recently went on vacation through Ontario. I saw what wind farms look like. Giant towering turbines that thrill on first glance, then simply become eyesores that produce little return for great investment.

Solar: A pipe dream. Unless and until the energy eggheads develop the perfect solar panel that can defeat cloud cover, it will never work.

Nuclear: Will always be dangerous and toxic. Nuclear power will never be safe until Fusion is here. Fusion is the energy of the future--and it always will be.

So we are stuck with burning our fossil fuels until they run out. We don't have an alternative. And when they do run out, we will be forced back into a simpler existence. Maybe not within my lifetime, but it will happen.

Maybe not. There may be some egghead someday soon that will solve this problem, hopefully before my nephews are forced to deal with it.

God, I hope so.

Typical

Naturally.

What do I see when I tune my non-cable television?

ABC: Obama's speech to Congress.
CBS: Obama's speech to Congress.
NBC: Obama's speech to Congress.
PBS: Obama's speech to Congress.
FOX: So You Think You can Dance.

If anyone at this point thinks that Fox is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, please consider how many times Fox didn't show a speech and/or Press conference given by George W. Bush.

A Trend I'd Like to End

I have a bad habit.

I have this notorious tendency to avoid seeing CG animated movies in theaters.

This habit has caused me to miss seeing any number of quality films over the last 2 decades. They are, in no particular order: Toy Story (1 & 2), Shrek (All), The Incredibles, Cars, Finding Nemo, Bolt, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life, and many, many others.

(I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not gonna link to those. I'm not your damn search engine!)

You see, I am a reasonably mature adult, and I have this deeply embedded fear of going to see any animated movie in a theater, for fear that I will be labeled a juvenile.

It's a fear that I am sure is shared with many other adults, and one that I and others need to get over.

Typically, these CG animated features are of the highest possible quality, if for no other reason than that the sheer effort involved in producing them ensures that no CG project will be greenlighted if there is no assurance to the producers that it will profit them. Seriously. These things typically take over 2 years to produce and can involve dozens or even hundreds of people, an investment of time and effort practically unheard of in Hollyweird.

Now. I have seen all of the above mentioned movies at home, on DVD. And they were all tremendously entertaining. I can't imagine what it must have been like to see them on a Movie screen.

So the next big CG film that comes out, I will be there. I promise. Really.

The Great Lakes

Recently I was on a vacation trip to Manitoulin Island in Ontario (Canada)

(In case you wondered what or where that is, check here).

It's a very nice place. It can get a bit cold at night, which is not surprising considering it is roughly at the same latitude as Northern Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula (places where summer typically lasts about a week and a half). But there are several nice beaches and plenty of sights to see, and a whole lot of isolated spots for folks who want to get away from civilization (the largest town on the island contains roughly 1800 people--there are more deer than people living on this island.)

Or, at least, there WERE several nice beaches.

You see, the Great Lakes are at their lowest level in decades. So all over the island, what were once pristine sandy beaches are now mosquito-infested, goose-crap covered swamps, teeming with bacteria (I picked up a bacterial infection from one of them that landed me in the emergency room.)

This fact should scare everyone on a number of levels. The Great Lakes account for roughly 22% of the world's supply of fresh water. They supply water to nearly every state and province that touches one of them. And they are being heavily overused.

They also act as a conduit for international shipping, which is a source of invasive species that threaten their delicate ecosystems.

Anyway, to make a long story short: Humans are slowly and systematically killing the Great Lakes. And if we don't stop doing it, the Great Lakes region is going to face a water crisis that is going to make what the western states are going through look like a 2-week drought in comparison.

Shout Them Down

Lately I've been lamenting the effectiveness of the tactics of the astroturf teabaggers who have been disrupting the town hall meetings on Health care reform between members of congress and their constituents.

I think I have the solution.

You see, tonight, I watched my favorite movie, Casablanca, again.

My (and many other people's) favorite scene in the movie (and perhaps the best scene of the whole movie)is when an inebriated group of Nazi officers in Rick's cafe have commandeered a piano and are loudly singing "Die Wacht Am Rhein"(Watch on the Rhine). Victor Laszlo, the resistance leader, storms into the room and orders the cafe band to play the French national anthem "La Marseillaise". With the tacit approval of Rick, the band begins the song, and the largely French refugee patron crowd begins loudly singing along. The Nazis are drowned out by sheer numbers and are forced to sheepishly sit down. It's a truly stirring and touching scene, and it's the scene that makes it my favorite movie of all time.

It has also given me an idea. So here is my plan: If you happen to attend one of these town hall meetings, find a group of people who are with you. Then, pick out the astroturf hecklers and surround them. Then, when they get up, simply stand up around them and out-shout them with any variation of "Sit down and shut the hell up".

There are a lot more of us than there are of them. It's time we showed it!

G.I. Joe

I have been to see the new movie G.I. Joe.

I enjoyed it.

It was fast-paced, stupid, explosive, stupid, silly, stupid, cliched, stupid, fun, stupid, and just all-around entertaining.

An aside: My biggest laugh probably came when the character of General Hawk gave the line "Knowing is half the battle". I cracked up for a full ten seconds, while people around me stared like I was nuts. I should point out that the people around me were mostly under the age of 25--they had no experience with the PSA's that appeared at the end of every episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon series that aired back in the 80's that ended with the line.

I acknowledge that the acting was wooden, the characters forgettable, and the exposition was mere filler in between the mind-boggling action sequences. What did anyone expect from a movie that features Dennis Quaid as the lead?

With a few rare exceptions, you cannot expect more from a summer blockbuster. You expect cheap entertainment, while the major studios expect strong opening box office returns that they can use to finance the "art films" that gain them the Oscars. They will then make up any losses from the movie by releasing the expanded 2-disc DVD of the movie 6 months later, with enough contained extras that people will want to own it. How else can anyone explain why 3 versions of Pearl Harbor were released on DVD?

Meanwhile, these movies, that often are the People's choice award nominees, typically outperform the Oscar nominees at the box office by a figure of more than 5 to 1. Sensing a trend, anyone?

We go to the movies in the summer to be entertained, and to spend a few hours in air-conditioning that we don't have to pay for. If we get a little education from it, that's just a bonus.

If critics complain that the new G.I. Joe movie wasn't screened for them, well maybe that's because the producers didn't want it to be savaged by the critics who panned Transformers 2 for being the exact same thing that this movie is.

Entertaining.

Ask the folks who come out of G.I. Joe and Julie and Julia how much fun their movie was...

It's Official (Again)

Well, if I needed any proof that Hollyweird has run out of ideas, I've gotten it.

You may recall a few months ago that I pointed out ABC's remake of the series Cupid. At the time, I laughed at it, because it was a remake of a show that had failed spectacularly less than a decade earlier. Of course, I ended up liking the show, mostly because it was well-written and well-acted, a rarity in this day and age of reality TV

Well, now ABC has announced a remake of "V", a miniseries and then TV series that aired about 25 years ago on NBC.

The premise of the show was simple enough: A large number of giant spaceships appeared over Earth, with the inhabitants looking to loot Earth's natural resources. The miniseries and series was eerily similar to the movie Independence Day that appeared about a decade later, only instead of dropping giant blue beams of antimatter that obliterated entire cities prior to stripping the planet of its resources, the aliens in question infiltrated our society by disguising themselves as humans and pretending to come in peace and goodwill.

The show failed of course, mostly because it was poorly written and acted, and was prohibitively expensive to produce. Not unlike NBC's previous Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica (the original series).

Nowadays, of course, hi-tech Sci-fi shows are easier and cheaper to make, mostly because of advances in digital technology.

But this does not change the fact that this new show is still a remake of a failed TV series that lasted less than one season, and only originated in the first place due to the minor success of two massive miniseries that were successes because there was little else to watch at the time.

I have long held this theory: Decades ago, at the dawn of Hollywood, thousands of writers, directors, producers, and other film and TV people created this giant vat full of ideas. As movies and TV shows were created, those ideas were drained out of this vat and used as necessary. And new ideas would be tossed into this vat by others, thus keeping the vat full.

But as more and more movies were made, and television went from four networks broadcasting eight hours a day to 400 networks broadcasting 24 hours a day, that massive vat of ideas got drained faster than it could be filled.

And then the ideas ran out. And the remakes began. Expect to see movie versions of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy within a decade.

I blame our education system for this. Our education system which has systematically cut funding to art and music education, which are the keys to stimulating imagination, which in turn is the key to creating new ideas.

Imagination has died here. When I was growing up, the books I read in elementary school envisioned a world where today we would be driving flying cars, colonizing other planets, and moving from one side of the planet to the other as easily as we walked across the street. Tell me: How much of that is true today?

It's Insidious

Yesterday, you the 3 readers of this blog read my report on the teabagger disruptions of the Town Hall meetings on health care reform.

I dismissed them as a lot of Sound and Fury and signifying nothing.

Today I'm not so sure.

You see, these disruptions are having a profound effect on the reporting of these events. Notice that I do not say the events themselves, but on the reporting of them.

Because at the many events that I am sure are being held around the country with no disruptions, there are no reports made of them. Because it's not sexy. It's not news. It's not something that will grab attention.

No, the disruptions of these events by the teabaggers are being reported because they make for great ratings.

Of course, the worst part is that the people who disrupt these meetings are utterly clueless to the fact that they are being manipulated by the corporate entities that are desperately trying to keep health care reform from being enacted in the first place. Sad, really.

You know, it is unfortunate that these sad people are getting so much attention. I am beginning to see eerie parallels forming between our nation and 1930's Germany. A minority party, using the tactics of fear and rhetoric, somehow managed to seize control of an industrial nation by taking advantage of the complacency of the working class. They hijacked the government and plunged the world into a war that it took decades to recover from. And it was all because good people stood by and did nothing.

So if any of you the 3 readers of this blog are at one of these meetings in the future, find one of these disruptors and stand next to him or her, and when he or she gets up to shout, start singing "We Shall Overcome". Hopefully, they will be so surprised that they will stop and sit down, if only in confusion if nothing else.

It's the only way we can overcome this threat.

The Teabaggers are Back!

Yes, folks, those crazy teabaggers are back again!

The tens of tens of people who protested the stimulus plan on April 15th are back, protesting at town hall meetings with members of Congress who are there to talk about the proposed health care reforms blundering their way through the government.

By the way, all I can say about Health care reform legislation is this: It's in the hands of Congress. God help us.

The strategy of the teabaggers is apparently this: Show up at the Town Halls, spread out as widely as possible, shout pre-arranged slogans designed to disrupt speakers, and generally cause as much distraction as possible. In other words, to paraphrase Shakespeare, Tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You see, these people have no ideas of their own. They followed the teachings of a happy idiot for 8 years, and the world watched as this country fell deeper and deeper into a quicksand lake of economic ruin and destructive wars overseas, all while the rich elite who pulled the strings sat back and laughed as they got progressively richer.

And now that there is a man in office who is trying to fix all the problems caused by his predecessor, they can do nothing other than try to disrupt his planned reforms any way they can. Of course, they have no ideas of their own on how to fix things. That would require thought on their part, something for which they are not known for.

It's simple, really. These. People. Are. Idiots.

Swine Flu

Swine flu is horseshit.

There. I said it.

And yet, American and Global news agencies are crowing about this like it will cause the end of the world.

If the latest figures are to be believed (and I have serious doubts), then approximately 80,000 people around the world have contracted this particular strain of virus. 327 people in 121 countries have died from it.

Doing the math, that means that out of a population of approximately 6.7 billion people in the world, about .0001 % of them have contracted this virus. I didn't bother to calculate the percentage of people who died from it.

Global pandemic?! Pah! 6 times more people are killed by lightning strikes every year. Your odds are better of winning the lottery than catching this virus.

Granted, viruses have been known to mutate and become more deadly. But such viruses tend to die rather quickly, simply because they kill their victims too quickly to spread. Viruses that survive do so by becoming LESS deadly, because they don't kill quickly, or even at all. Most victims survive the flu, simply because the flu tends not to be fatal, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for the victim at the time. The ones who DO die are often the ones who are the most vulnerable: The old, the very young, the weak, the already sick, etc.

I have to believe that any super-virus that comes our way that destroys us will come out of a test tube in some madman's laboratory, and nothing we do will stop it. It's not going to come from a pig pen.

2012

This weekend, I went to see the new Transformers movie. I saw a trailer for 2012. The trailer, among other things, shows a series of global disasters that take place on or about December 21st, 2012. This, supposedly, is the end of the world, according to the Mayan Calendar, which does not go past this date.

Much has been made about the end of the world. Many Christians believe it will end with The Rapture. Most believe that God will end the world with all the righteous souls taken bodily into heaven, with the unworthy left behind to rot.

My own personal belief is that when and if the end of the world happens, it will be entirely of our own making. Perhaps by a virus, or a nuclear holocaust.

The fact is that I have real problems with thinking that the world will end on some predicted date because some Mayan astronomer 4000+ years ago decided to stop calculating dates that would occur 4000 years after he was dead.

Of course, 3 years and six months from now, give or take a few days, if I am proved wrong, well then boy will I have egg on my face. Except no one will be around to rub it in.

If I am right, I win. If I am wrong, I still win. Either way, I win!

Fear Once Again Raises its Ugly Head

President Obama (I never get tired of saying that) has nominated Sonja Sotomayor to replace retiring justice David Souter to the Bench.

This may be the most significant first decision made in the first days of the young administration. By all accounts, she is a moderate to liberal judge, who tends to err on the side of doing what's right by cases she hears--i.e. she tends to believe that if an injustice has been done, it is the duty of a judge to undue said injustice.

She may come by this attitude naturally: She was a Prosecuting attorney for years, and she has to know that both the state and the accused MUST be represented fairly.

But now she has an appointment with the Big Bench. And the Conservative fearmongering attack machine has geared up full force to fight her. Led, of course, by Rush "Bounce Bounce Bounce" Limbaugh.

They are using the tactics of fear: "She will ensure that no white person ever holds a position of authority again" "She will negate prostitution's illegality." "She will never support the right of a man to exercise control over a woman's body."

Never mind the fact that if the Democrats had any sort of a spine, they would ramrod her selection through the Senate without so much as consulting Republicans.

But hey, why should they do that? It's not like the Republicans did the same thing with the nominations of Chief Justice "I can't remember the words to the Presidential Oath of Office" Roberts or Justice "Scalito" Alito.

Oh, wait...

Indy

The Indianapolis 500 will start in a few minutes.

I can't say as I care much for the race itself. First of all, How anyone can derive any enjoyment from driving 500 miles and getting nowhere is beyond me. Second, the eventual outcome of the race is rarely in doubt. Typically the winner will be one of five individuals who win the majority of all the races in the season.

There is no suspense in the pits either. Unlike NASCAR races, all 4 tires can easily be changed at once on the cars, thus eliminating the decision of whether to change all four tires or only two at a time.

Not that I am a fan of NASCAR either, but still.

But what I do enjoy is the pageantry that takes place before the race. The National anthem. The Military flyover. The military ceremony (the race is on Memorial Day weekend). The singing of "Back Home Again in Indiana" (By Jim Nabors--never been able to explain that one). And the words, "Gentlemen: Start your engines!"

It almost makes me wanna watch the race. Almost.

Dick. Cheney.

Is. An. Asshole.

OK, so let's examine the track record of the Cheney/Bu--er, Bush/Cheney administration.

1) Allowed, through a series of intelligence blunders, the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history to happen.
2) Used said attack to justify the invasion of a country that had NOTHING to do with said attack.
3) Prolonged that invasion into an occupation that caused that country to degenerate into a cesspool of violence and destruction that claims the lives of American troops on almost a daily basis.
4) Completely ignored the TRUE planner of that attack.
5) Shredded the Constitution, and removed all restrictions on Federal surveillance of American citizens, in the name of "preserving freedom"
6) Imprisoned hundreds of people in a specially constructed prison without charges, trial, or any means of due process whatsoever.

And the Obama administration is the threat to national security?!!

Susan Boyle

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last 2 months, you should know that Susan Boyle is the surprise contestant who appeared on Great Britain's version of "American Idol", and wowed everyone, including the judges, the audience, and just about everyone who has an internet connection with her stunningly talented voice. Seriously. This woman has a voice that would make Lena Horne, Maria Callas, and Renee Fleming sit down and cry.

The trouble with this woman is this: She looks like, not to put too fine a point on it, she took a nose dive out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Oh, this just in: I'm a shallow, insensitive prick sometimes. Deal with it.

As a result, no one took her seriously. Not the judges, and certainly not the audience. Until they heard her sing.

Nowadays, everyone knows who she is and what she can do.

But it won't last.

Let's face facts: This woman is never going to go on a concert tour. She is never going to star in a series of movies. She will never be featured in a music video. She will fade back into obscurity, simply because there are too many people who don't like how she looks.

Okay, so I get that today's society is obsessed with looks. (Let me say at this point that there is a good reason I don't have any pictures of myself on this blog.) It's the price we pay in today's 24/7 media obsessed world. Nobody likes to look at ugly people, no matter how talented they may be.

Don't believe me? I will make a bet with you the 3 readers of this blog: A year from now, ask any ten people you know who Susan Boyle is. If you get anything but a blank look, I'll give you a dollar.

Star Trek

I have just seen the new Star Trek movie. Not to give too much away, but it does involve stripping away nearly the entire Roddenberry Universe and starting over from scratch. Seriously. Roddenberry's ashes must be spinning in his grave.

In the process, of course, the groundwork has been laid for a whole new series of movies, and maybe even a new TV series. This movie is an attempt, in other words, to attract a whole new generation of Star Trek fans. To attract the "Twitter" generation.

The movie also employs the time-travel/Alternate reality theory. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, let me cite an extreme example: Suppose a time traveler went back in time to 1939 and supplied the Nazis with the designs and lists of materials needed for the Atom bomb. Nazi Germany conquers the world in days. Our world is changed forever.

This scenario, and variations of it,has been explored at length in any number of movies, TV shows, and books, from Back to the Future to It's a Wonderful Life. They even dealt with a variation of it in the original Star Trek series ("City on the Edge of Forever") and in Star Trek: The Next Generation (Yesterday's Enterprise)

Of course you always run into the problem of the time-travel paradox as well. For example: The grandfather paradox. You travel back in time. You happen to meet your own grandfather. You have a violent argument. You kill him. Thus you will have never been born. But if you were never born, how do you travel back in time to kill him?

Of course both can happen at once. Take this: A man travels back in time. He hands the lookouts on the Titanic binoculars. They see the iceberg in time to warn the bridge. The ship never hits the iceberg and never sinks. No movie is ever made about it. As good as it Gets rightly wins Best Picture that year. However, as a result of the safe voyage, the time-traveler's great-great grandmother never meets his great-great grandfather on the ship that would have rescued her. Thus, the time traveler is never born. But if so, how did he go back in time to save the ship?

It's usually at this point where my head explodes.

But in this new movie, they have taken the concept to the extreme level. The alternate reality and the time paradox theories have taken the Gene Roddenberry Star Trek universe out into the courtyard, tied it to a post, given it a blindfold and a cigarette, and executed it with a full firing squad.

It will be interesting to see what comes next.

Banning cell phones

A small town in my area is contemplating a ban on the use of cell phones while driving.

I have to say that I have mixed feelings on the subject.

I use my cell phone on occasion when I drive, but I always use a hands-free device--a bluetooth or other similar device.

I've been driving since I was 15. I haven't had an accident (knock on wood) in nearly 18 years. I'm a good driver. And I am fully capable of talking into a bluetooth earpiece while maintaining awareness of my surroundings.

I am also fully aware that there are people who are not capable of such awareness. I see them on the road nearly every day. Some of them have nearly hit me.

So this is my proposal: Instead of an outright ban on cell phone use while driving, do this instead: give everyone a new driving test.

Just like everyone took when they first got their drivers' licenses, make everyone take a supervised test. Give an instructor your cell number, then have him or her call you and engage you in a spirited conversation while you perform a basic driving test supervised by another instructor. If you are able to pass it while talking, you will be allowed to use your phone while driving.

And I think that using a handheld phone while driving should be forbidden, plain and simple. With the wide variety of hands-free devices cheaply available nowadays, there is no excuse for not using one while driving.

If anyone can think of a simpler solution, I am open to suggestion.

Live Action Comic Series

There have been a number of movie series that have come out in the past few years. These movie series are, in no particular order: X-Men, Spider-Man, Transformers, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk.

(I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not gonna link to those! I'm not your search engine!)

Most of these movies have been made possible by the advent of highly advanced CGI animation, which has made it possible for comic books to come to "real" life.

But what has made them even more possible has been the movement of my generation into what is called the "Money Demo", the coveted 18-49 year old age group that traditionally has the most money to spend.

You see, I came of age watching the various animated TV series that were created from the comics mentioned above. I had such a hardcore geek love for all of them that I never missed an episode. And now, as I am an adult, I am now experiencing those same series being made into live movies.

And I can't get enough of them.

Apparently there are a few folks in Hollyweird who still know what they are doing. That gives me a bit of hope.